Thanks everyone.

I think I'm still in the post-PhD "can't quite believe it" frame of mind. I don't think things were helped by a couple of friends finishing off their theses and one of them being quite a bit longer, almost making me feel that what I produced was overall poor.

I need to just keep telling myself that 1) it was about quality not quantity and 2) the quality was enough to be passed by two senior academics, one of which is arguably the biggest name in my intersection of fields.

I wasn't sure of the best place to raise this, but here seemed as good as any even if I don't now technically fit into the target audience!

I completed my PhD at the start of the year, successfully defended and I've even now graduated - simply put, it's over. But I submitted a spin-out paper to the top journal in my field, which after the review process was rejected. Now rejection is not altogether uncommon, but what's bugging me is that the comments made suggestions that I can't help but feel should have been in my thesis in the first place - in other words, if this reviewer had been my external examiner, I might well have ended up with major corrections.

Am I over-thinking things? Am I wrong to essentially be doubting the validity of my PhD because it could perhaps have been better? Are top (we're talking 4*) journal standards higher than PhD viva standards?

I sense this is very much "first world problems", in that I'm through the process and out the other end as Dr spiderpig. But any thoughts are most welcome!

I passed with "1 month" minor corrections :D

I can fill in the details later, but I was surprised at how much my internal steered the discussion, and so was the convenor when we bumped into each other in the toilets at the half-time break. But it was a good experience in the end and I was told I put up a robust defence of things that my internal was picking up on.

Phew!!

Well tomorrow's the day! I've decided not to look at my thesis tonight because if I'm not ready now...

I've taken another look at a recent review paper on my subject (which my external co-authored) so that I can confidently say where my work fits into the view of the topic they present. I've also recapped a couple of the other approaches that exist so I know not necessarily how I'm better, but what's different and why it's good that it's different.

I do keep reading about horror stories on here but they seem to focus on bad externals. I've met my external at conferences and he's been really nice and friendly, so I'm hoping it's the same tomorrow.

I was looking at the regulations for my uni and they don't seem to have a concept of major corrections - aside from the dreaded fail, my options are pass outright, 1 month minor corrections, 2 month minor revisions (whatever the difference between corrections and revisions might be) and revise and resubmit.

What's struck me is the latter is for addressing "substantial deficiencies" in the thesis. That's making me feel reasonably confident, because I couldn't see my supervisor letting be submit anything with "substantial deficiencies". But not over-confident - I still have an impending sense of doom and can't visualise myself being called "Doctor".

But I won't know until tomorrow!

I'm now in full prep mode and I've realised that given the citation I missed, I could and should probably strengthen the argument I've made as to why what I've done is different to and, for certain applications, better than an existing approach.

If that's picked up on, would such a change still be classed as "minor", i.e. it's not that I'm wrong to propose my new approach, but the justification for doing so needs to be tighter?

Thanks for the replies. It's always reassuring to get comments from people who have felt the same and been successful.

I found some tips on jobs.ac.uk which had some general questions that could be asked. So I've just answered them to myself and I found I was able to actually do it! Obviously I can't guarantee being asked the same, but it was good to let myself realise that I do actually know what I've done!

My biggest concern still is that I'm asked about how my work compares to X, where X is something I've somehow missed. I've noticed there's one paper that did pass me by which is unfortunate in that my external is a co-author, but not such a big deal in that it's a companion paper to one I have cited and the two would go together in the same set of referencing brackets anyway.

OK, that was quite scary to write. But my viva is a week today, so a week from now I'll either be Dr Spiderpig or propping up a bar somewhere drowning my sorrows.

I'm not really sure if I'm looking for specific advice as such because there's already a load of it here. I guess my specific worries are that I've interpreted something in the literature incorrectly which has led to a glaring error, or I've passed incorrect comment on one of my external's publications.

Although in some ways, I'm feeling exactly the same as I do before making a conference presentation - it's not so much giving the presentation, but knowing there'll be questions, yet not knowing what to expect.

I'm taking heart from the stats in some way, in that it's exceptionally rare to get any worse than "6 month" major corrections for a thesis that's been properly supervised and submitted with supervisor approval (and if that happens, I'll take stock but then do my damnedest to beat the deadline and then some). We have 6-monthly monitoring meetings where supervisors fill out a form about progress and in all mine my supervisor was "very satisfied" in all areas so I've presumably been doing something right.

Reading this back it looks unbelievably disjointed! But I think I just needed to get my thoughts down somewhere so apologies and thanks for reading :)

My supervisor's general rule for any writing (from rough ideas right through to the thesis) is "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you've told them".

I interpreted that as in the intro, it's future tense ("this thesis will"), in the methods, results and discussion it's present ("such-and-such data shows") and the conclusion is past ("this thesis has shown") and seemingly that's what he meant. At least, when I've used that convention he's not corrected me!

Lit review is a strange one. The instinct is to talk in the past tense, but I was told to talk in the present ("Bloggs et. al. [2010] show", as opposed to "...showed"), because while the research was in the past, you're reading the results "now". When critically evaluating literature in terms of your thesis, it's future ("...but this thesis will show that their approach has its drawbacks...").

Hope this helps!

I thought I'd bump this up again to say that I finally submitted yesterday. A little over 50,000 words (computer science) and mostly done via normal working days.

I've already spotted a couple of things wrong, though - a typo and a word that's completely wrong (I'd renamed a concept to avoid ambiguity, but one instance got through the search+replace net) and now I'm thinking that if I'd worked longer, I could have spent more time weeding these out.

But on the other hand, they're not the sort of things a thesis is failed on (I hope!) so it's probably not worth me worrying!

I'm going to be submitting within the next few weeks (sounds scary writing it!) and I'm delighted at where I've got to, given that 18 months ago I was panicking about having no clear goals and a lack of focus.

I've almost got a thesis that's about the length expected for my type of PhD (needs a dozen or so more pages/couple of thousand words to bring it firmly into the camp) but I've got a slight niggle at the back of my mind - I don't feel I've put in nearly the amount of work that's needed, especially at this late stage.

Other people who have submitted recently were spending long days and weekends working on their thesis, but I've been able to do it by coming in 9-5(-ish) and balance it with other bits and pieces of admin/writing/non-PhD stuff that have been sent my way (as well as some procrastination...).

My supervisor thinks the story so far makes sense, my completed chapters are good, needing only a handful of relatively minor changes each. External people have also said they think my work is interesting and that I've "really got something", so the substance is obviously there.

I guess I'm wondering if anyone else feels the same - having a thesis there almost ready to submit, but thinking that there's been nowhere near enough work in the final stretch compared to what others have put in?

Usually try and work 9-5 Monday-Friday.

I've got my own desk in an open-plan office with other people in my research group. I recently found out that a lot of other departments in the uni implement a hot-desking policy for PhD students, which something I would hate. My desk is my own space: if I want to have it covered in papers, books and notes then I that's my choice. I don't want to have to tidy everything into a drawer every night.

I always do run things past my supervisor and the arrangement is that he's always co-author.

He was happy with the paper and thought it stood a good chance. And I actually posted before I spoke to him, but when I did he said he was quite annoyed at the negative review because it was very harsh for what was in reality a minor error. The actual substance of the paper wasn't criticised, but a slight omission in a definition, which in turn did mean other things didn't make sense (but they would have if the mistake had been rectified).

It was a fairly long paper, so he said to take on board all the reviews I've had, polish and expand then submit to a journal. And I'm now really motivated to do that...but on Monday! I posted when I was a bit raw after the rejection, but I'm feeling better about it now, especially if it spurs me on to submit to a journal, which is much better than a workshop.

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I've just had notification that a paper I wrote for a workshop has been rejected. It was a revised version of a paper I'd had rejected for a (fairly big, low acceptance-rate) conference.

The problem is that the two sets of reviews I've got say the work is interesting and promising but I keep letting myself down with silly little mistakes that then add up. I'm reading one of the reviews and its recommendation to reject is based on me having missed out one small thing in a definition, but that then had an impact on some other definitions (which didn't make sense due to the omission).

My worry is that I don't have any PhD-related publications (the ones I have are related to other work I've helped out on) and there's no obvious targets for my work coming up. I'm just over 18 months in, so should I be worried?

I suppose it's good that I'm being told my work is interesting, but I don't have my name out there.

Some of you might remember my thread from a couple of months back where I was worried about where my PhD was going. Well, I'm slipping back towards that again now because I feel so deflated that I keep missing out on getting my work published.

Sorry for the double post, but in the space of a couple of hours I feel much better.

I went and had a coffee with a couple of mates who are also doing PhDs and it turns out we're all pretty much the same.

I would still quite like the possibility of an extension and to try and set a clear goal. The former I'll broach in my next face-to-face meeting and the latter I'll dedicate tomorrow and Friday to in the form of more or less writing a whole new research proposal, but without what I've already done.

Blimey, I feel so motivated now! :-)

Thanks for the replies.

I don't think the department has a welfare person, but the uni has a counselling service which is probably the closest thing.

I've just been out for a long walk, which normally helps me work things out, but this time it's made me realise something: I don't know if I do genuinely want to continue my PhD, or if I only want to keep going because I enjoy the working environment and I have a great group of friends here. And that's the strange thing: my social life is fine and I can't wait for the next night out or party to come along. But that's no basis on which to continue and I really need to find an answer to that question.

I'm considering making an appointment with my GP because I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for everything...except going to the pub, which is concerning in itself.